Subtitles and Transcript

Chade-Meng Tan

0:11
So what does the happiest man in the world look like?He certainly doesn't look like me.He looks like this.His name is Matthieu Ricard.So how do you get to be the happiest man in the world?Well it turns outthere is a way to measure happiness in the brain.And you do that by measuring the relative activationof the left prefrontal cortex in the fMRI,versus the right prefrontal cortex.And Matthieu's happiness measureis off the charts.He's by far the happiest manever measured by science.Which leads us to a question:What was he thinking when he was being measured?Perhaps something very naughty.(Laughter)Actually, he was meditatingon compassion.Matthieu's own experienceis that compassion is the happiest state ever.

1:13
Reading about Matthieuwas one of the pivotal moments of my life.My dreamis to create the conditionsfor world peace in my lifetime --and to do thatby creating the conditionsfor inner peaceand compassionon a global scale.And learning about Matthieugave me a new angle to look at my work.Matthieu's brain scan showsthat compassion is not a chore.Compassion is something that creates happiness.Compassion is fun.And that mind-blowing insightchanges the entire game.Because if compassion was a chore,nobody's going to do it,except maybe the Dalai Lama or something.But if compassion was fun,everybody's going to do it.Therefore,to create the conditions for global compassion,all we have to dois to reframe compassionas something that is fun.

2:20
But fun is not enough.What if compassionis also profitable?What if compassion is also good for business?Then, every boss, every manager in the world,will want to have compassion --like this.That would create the conditionsfor world peace.So, I started paying attentionto what compassion looks like in a business setting.Fortunately, I didn't have to look very far.Because what I was looking for was right in front of my eyes --in Google, my company.

2:59
I know there are other compassionate companies in the world,but Google is the place I'm familiar withbecause I've been there for 10 years,so I'll use Google as the case study.Google is a companyborn of idealism.It's a company that thrives on idealism.And maybe because of that,compassion is organicand widespread company-wide.In Google, expressions of corporate compassionalmost always follow the same pattern.It's sort of a funny pattern.It starts with a small group of Googlerstaking the initiative to do something.And they don't usually ask for permission;they just go ahead and do it,and then other Googlers join in, and it just gets bigger and bigger.And sometimes it gets big enoughto become official.So in other words,it almost always starts from the bottom up.

3:54
And let me give you some examples.The first example is the largest annual community event --where Googlers from around the worlddonate their labor to their local communities --was initiated and organizedby three employeesbefore it became official,because it just became too big.Another example, three Googlers --a chef, an engineerand, most funny, a massage therapist --three of them, they learned about a region in Indiawhere 200,000 people livewithout a single medical facility.So what do they do?They just go ahead and start a fundraiser.And they raise enough money to build this hospital --the first hospital of its kindfor 200,000 people.During the Haiti earthquake,a number of engineers and product managersspontaneously came togetherand stayed overnightto build a toolto allow earthquake victims to find their loved ones.And expressions of compassionare also found in our international offices.

5:00
In China for example,one mid-level employeeinitiated the largest social action competition in China,involving more than 1,000 schools in China,working on issuessuch as education, poverty,health care and the environment.There is so much organic social actionall around Googlethat the company decided to forma social responsibility teamjust to support these efforts.And this idea, again,came from the grassroots,from two Googlers who wrote their own job descriptionsand volunteered themselves for the job.And I found it fascinatingthat the social responsibility teamwas not formed as part of some grand corporate strategy.It was two persons saying, "Let's do this,"and the company said, "Yes."So it turns outthat Google is a compassionate company,because Googlers foundcompassion to be fun.

6:02
But again, fun is not enough.There are also real business benefits.So what are they?The first benefit of compassionis that it creates highly effective business leaders.What does that mean?There are three components of compassion.There is the affective component,which is, "I feel for you."There is the cognitive component,which is, "I understand you."And there is a motivational component,which is, "I want to help you."So what has this got to do with business leadership?According to a very comprehensive studyled by Jim Collins,and documented in the book "Good to Great,"it takes a very special kind of leaderto bring a companyfrom goodness to greatness.And he calls them "Level 5 leaders."These are leaderswho, in addition to being highly capable,possess two important qualities,and they arehumility and ambition.These are leaderswho are highly ambitious for the greater good.And because they're ambitious for a greater good,they feel no need to inflate their own egos.And they, according to the research,make the best business leaders.And if you look at these qualitiesin the context of compassion,we findthat the cognitive and affective components of compassion --understanding people and empathizing with people --inhibits, tones down,what I call the excessive self-obsession that's in us,therefore creating the conditionsfor humility.

7:55
The motivational component of compassioncreates ambition for greater good.In other words,compassion is the way to grow Level 5 leaders.And this is the first compelling business benefit.The second compelling benefit of compassionis that it creates an inspiring workforce.Employees mutually inspire each othertowards greater good.It creates a vibrant, energetic communitywhere people admire and respect each other.I mean, you come to work in the morning,and you work with three guyswho just up and decide to build a hospital in India.It's like how can you not be inspired by those people --your own coworkers?So this mutual inspirationpromotes collaboration,initiative and creativity.It makes us a highly effective company.

8:52
So, having said all that,what is the secret formulafor brewing compassionin the corporate setting?In our experience,there are three ingredients.The first ingredientis to create a cultureof passionate concernfor the greater good.So always think:how is your company and your jobserving the greater good?Or, how can you further servethe greater good?This awareness of serving the greater goodis very self-inspiringand it creates fertile groundfor compassion to grow in.That's one.

9:36
The second ingredientis autonomy.So in Google, there's a lot of autonomy.And one of our most popular managers jokes that,this is what he says,"Google is a placewhere the inmates run the asylum."And he considers himself one of the inmates.If you already havea culture of compassionand idealismand you let your people roam free,they will do the right thingin the most compassionate way.

10:08
The third ingredientis to focus on inner developmentand personal growth.Leadership training in Google, for example,places a lot of emphasis on the inner qualities,such as self-awareness, self-mastery,empathy and compassion,because we believethat leadership beginswith character.We even created a seven-week curriculumon emotion intelligence,which we jokingly call "Searching Inside Yourself."It's less naughty than it sounds.So I'm an engineer by training,but I'm one of the creators and instructors of this course,which I find kind of funny,because this is a company that trusts an engineerto teach emotion intelligence.What a company.

11:00
(Laughter)

11:02
So "Search Inside Yourself" -- how does it work?It works in three steps.The first stepis attention training.Attention is the basisof all higher cognitive and emotional abilities.Therefore, any curriculumfor training emotion intelligencehas to begin with attention training.The idea here is to train attentionto create a quality of mindthat is calm and clearat the same time.And this creates the foundationfor emotion intelligence.The second step follows the first step.

11:46
The second step is developing self-knowledgeand self-mastery.So using the supercharged attention from step one,we create a high-resolution perceptioninto the cognitive and emotive processes.What does that mean?It means being able to observe our thought streamand the process of emotionwith high clarity,objectivityand from a third-person perspective.And once you can do that,you create the kind of self-knowledgethat enables self-mastery.

12:24
The third step, following the second step,is to create new mental habits.What does that mean? Imagine this.Imagine whenever you meet any other person,any time you meet a person,your habitual, instinctive first thoughtis, "I want you to be happy.I want you to be happy."Imagine you can do that.Having this habit, this mental habit,changes everything at work.Because this good willis unconsciously picked up by other people,and it creates trust,and trust creates a lot of good working relationships.And this also creates the conditionsfor compassion in the workplace.Someday, we hope to open-source"Search Inside Yourself"so that everybody in the corporate worldwill at least be able to use it as a reference.

13:20
And in closing,I want to end the same place I started,with happiness.I want to quote this guy -- the guy in robes, not the other guy --the Dalai Lama,who said, "If you want others to be happy,practice compassion.If you want to be happy,practice compassion."I found this to be true,both on the individual leveland at a corporate level.And I hope that compassionwill be both fun and profitable for you too.